Buenos Aires

Before I get into more details about our trip from Buenos Aires to Tarija, I would like to mention something that happened before we left New Zealand which was very very special. I wanted to start the blog with this but it took me longer than expected to sort out the accompanying video.
   Prior to leaving we were treated by our friends in the Rotorua congregations to a farewell. The whole evening was overwhelming for us but it was especially humbling to find out that many had been practicing for weeks to put on a performance for us including Maori poi and action songs. I didn't get to video the whole thing but follow this link to see some of it anyway. A very special thanks to our friends for making us feel so special.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-fXTmJDVzU

Getting back to South America now, our flight got into Buenos Aires, and I was amazed by the sheer size of the city. It sprawls out for miles and looks quite impressive. The taxi drivers were very disappointed with us for staying only night, and they tried to get us to go straight into the city to make the most of the night life. They say it is like New York and never sleeps. Of course we weren't interested in the night life they were talking about, but it was true the place seemed to be just coming to life at 10p.m. A word about the taxi drivers here by the way, they won't hesitate to rip you off if you are not alert to prices and currencies. At present the NZ dollar buys you about 8 Argentine pesos, and make sure to have some on hand before you arrive if possible. When you come out of the airport guys will grab your bags and load them into their friends taxis and expect to be tipped. This is unavoidable, but they turn their noses up at US coins which they can't exchange, and expect $US5 minimum which amounts to a pretty healthy $50Arg tip! If you have pesos it is the better option I think! We had to take two taxis due to the volume of luggage. When we arrived at the hotel the drivers basically invited us to give whatever we thought for the ride! I am sure if we had underpaid them they would have spat the dummy, I guess being gringos they thought we may give them wads of cash and been none the wiser, but fortunately we had an idea of the cost so we gave that and asked them to return in the morning to pick us up for the airport. (By the way we paid them 25 pesos for a ride of around 10-15 mins)
   My daughter Syntyche booked our hotel from NZ and it turned out to be good value with an excellent breakfast as well. Once we booked in and ferried our truckload of luggage up to our rooms in the tiny lift, we went exploring. The outskirts of the city were a bit more third world than I expected, but we intend to go back for a decent look at the city later in the year, as I know we didn't see the best of it. We found a restaurant and as Drew and I had been doing all the speaking in Spanish we insisted the girls have a turn. They promptly pointed to a special pasted on the wall and said "dos, por favor" - cheats. Having said that it turned out OK as it was a large pizza and a litre of beer, awesome! Quite inexpensive too.
   After our meal, a good nights sleep and the hotel's brilliant breakfast, we hauled our mountain of luggage out onto the road to await our taxi. No show, great! At least it showed we weren't a soft touch. Fortunately taxis are everywhere in South America and so we hailed two and made our way to the airports domestic terminal. Make sure to book in early if you fly out from here, the queues to check in were horrendously long and slow. Any way we made our flight and sat back to enjoy the two and half hour flight to Salta. I have to say that I was stunned by the immensity of flat fertile arable land in Argentina. Both of our flights across country were over mile after mile of perfectly flat intensively farmed countryside, somewhat like the mid-west in the states. I expected more rugged terrain as we headed North. Bolivia made up for Argentina's lack of ruggedness and altitude believe me, but more on that in coming days.
My next post will be about Salta which is quite an interesting city. Tune in tomorrow for this, including a few videos.
Hasta luego